A few days ago I watched some Youtube videos on the Philhealth controversy. It was an eye-opener.
My takeaways from watching several video clips showed how sick Philhealth is. It is ironic that the agency created by the government to attend to the medical and hospitalization expenses of Filipinos could come to a situation when it is itself subject of financial ills.
There was an uncertainty as to how much money it has, including what is called as reserves. The hearings held in the Senate and in the lower house gave the same impression. There is no clear definition and explanation about the money available for expenses of patients, whether it is 400 billion pesos or 600 billion pesos or something in-between.
One thing is certain though… The patients who are supposed to benefit are complaining that the share of the medical expenses that Philhealth provides is much less that they need. To cite an example given in the program of Ted Failon, a woman wrote and described her experience. She underwent a heart operation that cost 700 hundred thousand pesos but Philhealth could only shoulder 25 thousand pesos.
The very low amount Philhealth can shoulder has been a problem it could not solve for years. This dire situation became more serious when Philhealth coverage became universal, meaning everybody can file a claim including those who do not pay any premium. Making this possible even to the poor and non-paying is magnanimous. However, this means more people sharing in the risk but with a large number of those covered by this risk not paying any premium at all. A national government subsidy is, therefore, necessary otherwise the premium of paying members will balloon to astronomical and politically unacceptable proportions.
This move of not subsidizing Philhealth is another controversy that hounds Congress. It has made Congress the “contrabida” particularly since the budget proposal for 2025 also featured a ballooning unprogrammed appropriations which will be accessed by Senators and Congressmen to the tune of around 500 billion pesos. Consequently the budget of DPWH has leaped to over a trillion pesos.
When the DPWH is mentioned this means that all funding decisions for specific projects have to come from members of Congress. This is legal because of the long-standing provision that infrastructure projects require consultation with Congress persons before they can be implemented.
It is common knowledge that this system is tainted with corruption. The problem here is that the Philhealth system is also tainted with irregularities.
While their system may not be outright corruption but it reeks so much of corruption. It is this culture in Philhealth that may have caused some of its officials to think of allocating 138 million pesos to spend in 2025 for Philhealth’s Anniversary, including buying 7 million pesos worth of umbrellas and spending 3.5 million pesos for a coffee-table book.
Only an agency insensitive to what people feel about their deficient services will think of this extravagant celebration. This type of mentality could be imbedded in the culture of this agency.
And one more thing about Philhealth’s financial decisions. This agency has investments in properties and corporate stocks in the amount of 489 billion pesos that has led several Congressmen to comment that Philhealth is now a business enterprise rather than government agency attending to the medical expenses of Filipinos.
Having 489 billion pesos in his agency portfolio is very tempting for many banks to have control on and to get a fee for managing this account. A two percent interest income alone will lead to an annual interest income of 10 billion a year.
The President of Philhealth, Emmanuel Rufino Ledesma, Jr., has a “palusot”. He said that they are attending to this problem and just need Congres s to be patient. He did not promise a timeframe. But before that he said that it has been more than ten years that this has been the case at Philhealth. It was like he was saying just “give us a few more years and this faulty orientation will be solved”.
These are investments that can easily be withdrawn and used to provide more benefits to Philhealth members. Why wait a few more years? He just promised Philhealth members that he will make them suffer even more.
In the course of the Senate and lower house investigations, the background of Mr. Ledesma in finance was mentioned. Having an expert in finance in a health-oriented agency does not seem to be a good idea. It simply is not working. More than two years into his term the problem just keeps getting bigger and bigger. He should be on the way out but his family name seems familiar among trusted associates of the present administration. So he will not be going anywhere.
If that will be the case, the problems in Philhealth will persist.
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